Saturday, February 21, 2009

Twenty Poetry Books

I was tagged on facebook to do this, but I thought I might as well do it here instead. The tag was essentially this: “What are 20 poetry books (if there are twenty) that made you fall in love with poetry?”

So here’s my initial playlist. Which is, I’m not claiming these as the best books of all time, and I’m also not claiming them as the books I return to most often, or that they are the best books by the individual poets listed, and I’m also skipping anthologies. These were—simply stated—the ones I came into contact with that changed something fundamental in me at the time, things I’ve remained changed by, organized here roughly in the order in which I encountered them, starting around 1986:

There are many books I’ve read that are as good as the books on this list, but they came along to support or clarify or otherwise swerve from these core books. The last ten years alone have brought wonderful work that continues to strike me, but trying to name it all would just be impossible. Suffice it to say it’s everything I’ve been talking about on my blog since I started it.

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So what core texts do you carry around? What books of poetry have put tapes in your head that continue to play, long after?